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"Linux came to the forefront of the ongoing DeCSS trial late
last week. That's because, in a very real way, Linux started the
uproar that has resulted in eight movie studios suing Eric
Corley. The trial could ultimately affect the way consumers
use products they purchase and the way researchers advance
technology."

"Journalist Eric Corley -- better known as Emmanuel Goldstein, a
nom de plume borrowed from Orwell's 1984 -- posted the code for
DeCSS (so called because it decrypts the Content Scrambling System
that encrypts DVDs) as a part of a story he wrote in November for
the well-known hacker journal 2600. The Motion Picture Association
of America (MPAA) claims that Corley defied anticircumvention
provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by
posting the offending code for anyone to download from his
Website."

"The whole affair began when teenager Jon Johansen wrote DeCSS
in order to view DVDs on a Linux machine. The MPAA has since
brought suit against him in his native Norway as well. Johansen
testified on Thursday that he announced the successful reverse
engineering of a DVD on the mailing list of the Linux Video and DVD
Project (LiViD), a user resource center for video- and DVD-related
work for Linux."